A journey through time and space with one of my oldest sites

It’s a good thing none of my old sites are around today. For one thing, many of them used Flash. Gratuitously. And while we didn’t have to think about responsive layouts or breakpoints, we did have to contend with displays that are tiny compared to today’s screens.

In fact, a 1998 iMac had a display resolution of 800 by 600 pixels. With browser chrome, the effective canvas shrunk to about 650 by 440 pixels. Talk about a design constraint.

The original iMac’s 13.8" (viewable) screen had a resolution of 800 x 600.

Not too shabby. This was when we were told to mind the fold. Also, when home pages were supposed to look like posters, not portals. Anyway, the 650 pixel site width fit right in. Get it? Fit right in? Sorry.

PS Internet Explorer 5! Just sayin’.

Give us 1024 or give us a poor user experience!

Even in the stone ages, some people had larger monitors. Here’s how the site looked on a second generation iMac from 2002:

A second generation iMac with a 15" screen had a resolution of 1024 x 768.